Bornto an impoverished but aristocratic Junker
family in West Prussia (parents: Fedor von Falkenhayn and Franziska von
Rosenberg), young Erich was commissioned as a second lieutenant by age
19. Twenty years later, in the early 1900s, Major von Falkenhayn found
himself serving in China as a military instructor and on Count von
Waldersee's general staff during the Boxer Rebellion. A favorite
of Wilhelm II -- he had been one of young Crown Prince Willy's
military instructors -- Falkenhayn returned to Germany, worked his way
up through several staff positions and, one year prior to war's
outbreak, was named Prussian War Minister.
Following the Marne disaster during the first month of
the war, Falkenhayn was selected to replace von Moltke as Chief of
General Staff. He simultaneously held this position and that of Prussian
War Minister for the next five months. Highly intelligent, but
indecisive and aloof, his push for unrestricted submarine warfare
brought him into conflict with Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg. He
also developed the perspective that the Western Front was the most
crucial area of fighting, bringing him into bitter conflict with the
heroes of the East, von Hindenburg and Ludendorff. He understood
early on, however, that the war was a probably a lost cause, compelling
him in 1916 to devise the desperate plan that would become the debacle
of Verdun. Because of this, he was replaced by von Hindenburg as
Chief of Staff, and thereafter demoted to commander the Ninth Army, a
force which overran Romania within nine weeks. He was then transferred
to Palestine to command Army Group Yildirim (1917-18) and
recapture Mesopotamia, but his failure to halt General Allenby there saw
him replaced by the capable Liman von Sanders and sent to the relatively
obscure command of the Tenth Army in Lithuania, where he spent the last
six months of the war. During the war, Falkenhayn was awarded both the
Pour le Merite (16.2.1915) and the Order of the Black Eagle (12.5.1915).

Soonafter the war, General of Infantry von Falkenhayn
went into retirement and secluded himself at Schloß Lindstedt
near Potsdam in order to pen his memoirs. Before dying there on 8 April
1922, he wrote "Supreme Army Command 1914-1916 and its Most
Noteworthy Decisions" and "The Ninth Army and its Campaigns
Against the Romanians and Russians, 1916-1917". Von Falkenhayn's
elder brother Eugen also served during the war as a corps-level
commander. He died on 8 April 1922 in Lindsted and is buried at the
Bornstedter Friedhof near Schloß Sanssouci in Potsdam.